Monday, August 24, 2009

Blinking Don: tired of mini-reflections

Jordan Davis wrote in to say:

"I saw a quote used as an epigraph that reminded me of your bout of Johnsonism a while back:

'I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation and connection and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.' -- Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Before I left Harvard, my office there had been relocated for a time in the new and not-yet opened Samuel Johnson wing of the Houghton Library. There wasn't a curator yet for the recently acquired Donald and Mary Hyde Collection, so I got to work there alone with such things as Johnson's silver teapot (click here to see it), his mss., Boswell's, too. My desk sat beneath one of the famous portraits of Johnson, and his peering over my shoulder got me to reread, or read, everything I could pertaining to his life and work ... it almost took over my life. I'm far away from all that now, but Jordan's message reminds me that Johnson both predicted and would have hated things like Twitter; wouldn't you know it, there's a guy now tweeting Johnson quotes all day long.

You can't even imagine a writer or man like Samuel Johnson flourishing now - and most everyone reading this would think, Good! That's progress, I guess. But I'm increasingly tired of reading and trying to get anything out of all the spurts and blurts and mini-reflections I take in, online in general and in contemporary poems in particular that I look at. Worse, I'm definitely & unapologetically a big book guy. I still rankle at Simic's dismissal of poetry books that are... too big. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is my favorite book of prose, and I'd have no bookshelf without Boswell's Life, half of Dickens, Creeley's / Lowell's / Blake's / Dickinson's / Olson's / Prynne's collected poems and EP's Cantos. I've been reading every syllable of Silliman's the Alphabet. I read all of the essays in Geoffrey Hill's collected essays - no mean feat, that. I've got a copy of Wendy Doniger's book on the Hindus on my to-do list - the largest book I've seen in a while! I admire Mark Scroggins' project to read Ruskin - and his biography of Zukofsky, both big. For me, the internet and the big book actually work together, but I can't quite explain how that works. And I don't feel superior, not at all, reading large books - it's just an appetite, like any other. Big damn books are, for me, as addicting as Facebook or iPhones are for other people. I picked up the habit when I spent almost the whole of my senior year in college reading Gravity's Rainbow instead of doing any work - for no other reason than because it was there. Even now, I read and read till my eyeballs hurt. I admire and try to imagine what goes into the writing of big books - usually, it's big lives - yet suppose few have or want the time to read or write them anymore - excluding, say, the ones about Harry Potter and maybe (have you finished them yet?) the novels of Roberto Bolaño. After all, who needs to think long and hard (what Bunting called sharp study and long toil) when you can type away, fuelled by caffeine or the moist air of some hothouse mentality - then emote and opine instead on your gizmo - and be taken seriously?

David Shapiro says: If a poet bores you, just wake up and look for another voice. I'm awake and looking. In the spirit, then, of brevity, soul, and wit - and wakefu looking - I hope to concoct a periodic feature here or elsewhere consisting of short and thoughtless takes on books that cross my desk. Maybe I'll call it "Editor's Briefs" or "Little Giddings..."

"The greater part of readers, instead of blaming us for passing trifles, will wonder that on trifles so much labour is expended, with such importance of debate, and such solemnity of diction. To these I answer with confidence, that they are judging of an art which they do not understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their ignorance, nor promise that they would become in general, by learning criticism , more useful, happier or wiser."

To which John responds:

"Ah, for a pedagogy that admits up front its subject is a fool’s errand..."

N.B. The funny-looking portrait you see above by Joshua Reynolds of my hero, Samuel Johnson, shows, as Wikipedia (which owes something to him) calls it "his intense concentration and the weakness of his eyes; he did not want to be depicted as 'Blinking Sam.'"

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DON SHARE

"Don Share is a poet and polymath extraordinaire and a great gift to the literary scene at large." - Aram Saroyan

About Wishbone (from Black Sparrow): "The most soulful book I've read in a long, long time." - Alice Fulton

"Don Share's work is compressed as a haiku, intent as a tanka, witty as a sonnet, witless as a song, relentless as an expose, patter without pretension...his elegant poetry, exposed as a haiku, expansive as a renga, boisterous as a bridge, happy as Delmore Schwartz with Lou Reed and vice versa, vivacious as the living day, sustained like a whole note, clipped as a grace note, loving various and shrewd as a thingist, soapy as Ponge, delightful as light, dedefining as a new rite, built out of attention, music and sight." - David Shapiro

"Squandermania is a book of associative delight, even when the poems are at their most grave. They combine the obliquity of Mina Loy, the incantatory freshness of Roethke, and even Plath’s devotion to nursery rhyme to leaven the book’s prevailing tones of irony, sorrow, and regret. The poet’s awareness of how daily life refuses to cohere into a consoling pattern is beautifully mirrored by his conviction that language itself signals a fall from grace and unity and emotional wholeness. And yet the poet keeps faith with language by allowing language to drive the poems, even as the poet’s occasions and subject matter are grounded in what Hopkins called 'the in-earnestness of speech.'" - Tom Sleigh

About Union: "Few poets manage such dexterous and fresh music. Few books are as lovely or profound." - Alice Fulton

"Brimming with heart and intelligence... confirmation of Don Share’s stature in American letters. Evidenced by a return to his debut collection, he’s been at the summit from the beginning." - William Wright, Oxford American

"Don Share's earnest, moving first volume, Union, represents the promising next stage in so-called Southern narrative poetry. Share writes clear, well-crafted page-long poems about romance, memory and separation ("our house tocks and ticks/ like an inherited clock whose hour hand sticks"). He may, however, achieve greater recognition for longer work (like "Pax Americana") in which his own stories join those of Memphis, Tennessee and of the Civil War's difficult, lingering guilt: "Where the United States ends/ and begins// The Mississippi is/ a long American wound." - Publishers Weekly

"I delight in the precision of these chiseled poems and in the sizeable, important ambition of Share's imagination." - David Baker

"Union is a tour de force, establishing Share’s credentials as well as his poetic voice." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"... something special. I hadn't known his poetry at all; it is brilliant." - Eric Ormsby

"The poetry of Don Share expresses many tensions between Memphis past and Memphis present, much like the novels and short stories of Peter Taylor." - Wanda Rushing, Memphis and the Paradox of Place: Globalization in the American South

About Miguel Hernandez: "There is a sense of shared elation between reader and translator that confirms the delight of exact sensation when the poems feel transmitted by that cautious and subtle alchemy that is the translator's skill. I have felt this with Don Share's versions of Miguel Hernandez: but this is also because he is a fine poet in his own right, one who surrenders his sensibilities to the task of transference." - Derek Walcott

"Share manages to make Hernández-in-English dazzle, bringing readers closer to the poet's sense of language and meaning." - Huffington Post

About Bunting's Persia: Guardian Book of the Year, 2012 and Paris Review staff pick!

"Both the publishing house and the book’s editor Don Share have done an excellent job: a slim and attractive book, a chronological poet-by-poet running order, and a fine introduction by Share, full of details about Bunting’s curious life." - Bookslut

"I read it on Valentine’s Day." - Lorin Stein

"Virtuoso writing by any standard... deserves to be famous." - The Hudson Review

"Bunting's Persia is a delight..." - Alastair Johnston, Booktryst

About The Traumatophile: "Trenchant, smart-ass, broken-hearted, hantée, swoony, maudlin, mordant, sinister, gloomy, goofy, eyes open and counting every penny, these are. And inspiring. How many poems can you say that about, anymore?" - The Unreliable Narrator blog